It was a busy day here at beautiful Bethany College this past Saturday, September 17. The Bethany College Football team had their first home game this past weekend against Washington and Jefferson College (W&J). For the first half football the Bison's looked good. Their running game was there with Matt Grimard, and Eric Walker running their bread and butter play, the read option. The score at the half was just 14-7 in favor of the W&J Presidents. This was a big improvement from years past, for the past 29 years now Bethany have lost to W&J. Everything seemed to be going the Bison's way in this game, until it was 4th and goal from the one yard line. Grimard got under center and tried to sneak it in for the score to take the lead in the game when he fumbled the snap, and the Presidents pounced on the ball. Even though it didn't give them good field position, the Presidents were able to march right down the field when time expired in the first half. Everything seemed to go down hill from there for the Bison's, countless 3 and outs and didn't seem to have an answer for the Presidents passing game. Bethany would only be able to put up one more score in the game, on a trick play. The final score in this game was 31-14 in favor of W&J. I found out later that was made this loss even worse for the Bison's was that W&J had their second team players in for the majority of the second half. Bethany will look to rebound next week when they take on Geneva in a non conference game.
That wasn't the only thing going on at Bethany College, both the Men's and Women's soccer teams were in action against Muskingum College on the men's side, and for the women Marietta College. Both of which were great games, let's start on the men's side of things. The Bison's played tough in this game right to the very end. There was some questionable calls by the officials late in this game which lead to the Bison's 4th loss of the season. The men of Bethany tied the game at one after the first half of play. After the half is when things got a little bit dicey with the calls that were being made, the cards that were given out, and the outcome of the game. It all got started with a terrible call on Forward Dustin Miaolo, which lead to a penalty kick for Muskingum. After the shot was made, a red card was given to Goal Keeper Patrick Coleman, which took him out of the game and brought in Anes Bekric who's real position is Defense, not Goal Keeping. more time ticked away as the Bison were now down 2-1 in the second half of this game. They were getting good looks and even better shots, but nothing could find the back of the net. About mid way through the second half Muskingum had a obvious off-sides call, which never got called. Now I am no soccer expert and I don't act like I am, but one of the rules that I know is off-sides. It's when a player on offense gets past the last player on the Defense, and it's not on a break away. Once the players foot touches the ball, the call then should be made. This particular play happened and once the player kicked the ball it hit, now GK Anes, in the hands when he was out of the box, which is also a no no. But this shouldn't have mattered since Muskingum's player was already off-sides, so nothing should have happened. Instead they awarded yet another penalty kick for Muskingum. Once the kick was made, the official then felt the need to give a red card to Anes, and take him out of the game for his action of "illegally touching the ball". Now Bethany was forced to find one of the best players in Jeff Krek, who has never played a day, minute, second, etc. in goal. Krek did okay for his first time not letting any other balls past him. This was the final 3-1 in favor of Muskingum.
Now for the Women's soccer team, who faced Marietta College. This was a great game and turned out well for the women of Bethany. The game looked to be getting out of hand after half with a score of 2-0 in favor of Marietta. The women of Bethany would not give up that easily though. They were able to come back and beat Marietta by a score of 3-2. After two amazing shots by two different Bison's players. The third goal that was awarded to the Bison's you can say was the Goal keeper's from Marietta's fault, because it was. The ball slipped though her hands and right into the goal to give the Bison's the lead 3-2 which ended up being your final score.
The last thing that happened hear at Bethany College was that of our UNDEFEATED Volleyball team. The women of Bethany College's Volleyball team are having their best year ever. The Bison women have set a new school record for the best start by a volley ball team in history, 12-0. They did however face their toughest task yet in St. Vincent College. They Bison's had to come back and fight all the way to the very end. They lost the first game, lost the second, won the third by a demanding lead, and lost the fourth game which was very close. This brought up game five in the best of five game to determine the winner of the contest. The Bison fought hard and were able to pick up the win and keep their undefeated record alive. Bethany was very busy with 4 of it's sports team playing at home ending with the football team at night. Each team played hard and left everything on the field/court. Though all of them didn't come up victorious, they were still a lot of fun to watch.
